Zoltán Szabó
The Situation at Tard
(Excerpts)

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(Less than one hold) Over a third of the "holdings" of Tard are under one hold. What the weekly diet of these "smallholders" reveals is more than poverty, it is a state verging on perpetual privation. One can hardly understand how it is possible to stay healthy, to endure hard physical labour, such as harvesting, under such conditions. How is it possible that the children of these families are able to run around the schoolyard as friskily as the others? One is almost tempted to doubt the indisputable facts, or to go even further and think that some "primeval force" is in evidence here, an unaccountable hardiness for which no sensible explanation exists, which can only be marvelled at. Judging by their outward appearance, the problems are not immediately apparent, the faces of these children are not thinner than those of their companions, but it is they who die of typhoid and other contagious diseases; it is these mothers who give birth to babies for the cemetery of Tard, as the legion of tiny grave-mounds in the corner of the cemetery attest. You can hardly tell by their faces that there is anything amiss, only a few of them, the poorest, are conspicuously pale, they are the ones who go barefoot even at the end of November, their feet numb with cold from wading through the icy mud. Their teacher will tell you that these children are slow-witted, their powers of comprehension incredibly poor, that they are strangely timorous and incapable of paying attention, totally absent-minded and that they spend their lunch hour running about and playing instead of eating. Let what they have written stand here without commentary, let them reveal the hopelessness of their situation, though their misery may be concealed within the whitewashed walls of neat, orderly houses. In Tard, poverty hides itself, it is too apathetic to become embittered. Anyone passing though the village, even if they gain entry into the houses, will see very little of this poverty, this patient suffering is somehow the most intimate secret of their lives. It bespeaks of a direct line of descent from those serfs who were "the patient bearers of every burden" according to Széchenyi, even in his time. "Who is a loyal serf, and how loyal!" even today.

The son of a smallholder (one hold) writes: "On Monday morning I ate jellied knuckles, midday cabbage, in the evening cabbage. Tuesday morning I ate bread, midday bread, in the evening sorrel. Wednesday morning I had bread, midday bread, in the evening noodles. Thursday morning I ate bread, midday bread, in the evening noodle soup. Friday I ate bread midday, and bread in the evening. Saturday morning I ate bread, midday bread, in the evening bread and onions. I had no milk all month because we haven’t got a cow and milk is dear and we can’t afford it..." He ate no meat all month, he ate no eggs all month. He ate bread and ate bread again, like the child of the landless peasant who writes:

"On Monday I ate bread and boiled sugar beet, bread midday, in the evening noodle soup. Tuesday morning I ate onions, bread midday, in the evening caraway-seed soup. Wednesday morning a piece of bread and carrot, bread midday, in the evening pea soup and potato noodles. Thursday morning bread, midday bread, in the evening noodle soup. Friday morning bread and carrot, midday bread and two lumps of sugar, in the evening bean soup. Saturday morning I ate bread, I did not bring anything to eat to school, in the evening bread and onions. Sunday morning I ate bread and bacon, midday a bit of milk loaf, in the evening noodle soup."

But perhaps the saddest of all these documents is what was written by the son of a one-hold smallholder, who instead of listing what he ate on the given days of the week, writes in a strange, childish way, and his boasts and his wording may give a better idea of the situation than all the official figures: "I have eaten many things," he writes, "but this week I ate mostly bread. I have eaten sausage, bacon, black and white pudding, ham. I have eaten milk loaf and milk, and this week I drank a lot of water. This was my weekly nourishment".

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The girls arrive around five or six in the afternoon and go home around ten or eleven at night. What happens in between corresponds to what the lads admit to concerning their love life. In the sultry atmosphere of the spinning room, the most insignificant word has sexual overtones, as usual among adolescents. Most often it is one of the lads, but sometimes the mistress of the house herself, who takes good care to steer the conversation in the sole exciting direction, taking a word with a double meaning as a starting point. Once begun, one word quickly leads to another, conversation is lively and unrestrained, repartee is smart and the laughter of the girls intimates that they have taken nothing amiss and are pleased and grateful for the attention. There are powerful traditions and set ways of wresting innuendoes from or commenting upon the most innocent remark. Two or three girls slip out of the door giggling, two put their arms around each other’s shoulders to make up the horse. The third clambers up on their back and the bizarre little group enters the room to set upon and bump against one of the lads, and the ensuing rough-and-tumble, accompanied by much laughter, ends with their rolling about on top of one another on the floor. The old women calmly continue to spin and smile at the tomfoolery of the young people. The main thing is that in the midst of all the jollity everyone must get their work done.

It is practically inevitable that conversation cannot be pursued except in the tone that has become traditional. A visitor to the spinning room inadvertently gave a sigh during a momentary lull in the singing. The young mistress of the house immediately pounced on him: "Of course the young gent needs a woman!" "Well—to cook for me!" the visitor retorted quickly. Laughter, a short silence, the young woman sweetly offers her services: "I’d cook for you!" "What would you expect as payment?" asks the honoured lad. "Have you got a good sofa?" the woman replies and looks openly at the girls, who burst into uncontrollable laughter, which fills the room for minutes. Another of the lads gives a sigh. "What ails you?" asks the woman. As she receives no reply, she asks again: "Can it be helped in daylight?"

The piquancy of the punch-line is enjoyed irrespective of age, by the old and the very young alike. Many of the girls are no more than thirteen or fourteen, and in one of the spinning rooms the centre of attention is a young lad barely twelve years of age. He sat on a footstool within the circle of girls and kept on snatching the spindles that rolled away from under the noses of the lads standing about in the background, monopolizing the much-desired tussling that accompanies the returning of the spindle. He took part in the bantering as resourcefully and quick-wittedly as the others, took every opportunity to prove he was the life and soul of the party and that he was more grown up than his size would make you think. When he had snatched up the runaway spindle for the fifth time running, someone asked him, dropping a hint that his interference was unnecessary: "Well and where shall I commend you to, lad, to hell, to heaven, or to purgatory?" The mistress of the house: "He doesn’t want to go anyplace except to the girls’ heaven." And the child, grinning broadly: "That’s right, right under their skirts!" The circle of girls laughs at this for minutes, the more bashful ones covering their faces with their hands and peeping at the lads from between their fingers. The air is hot and stuffy, the girls are pink cheeked and pretty in the reflected light of the red embroidery, in their finery in front of the walls hung with plates. When I say to the lad standing beside me that these girls would make pretty sweethearts for them, he flashed his eyes at me and said: "The girls from Mezoýkövesd are prettier." And a little later added: "and more skillful too."

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